Catalyst

There’s a Difference Between School and Real Life: This week on Track Changes, Paul and Rich sit down with Allan Chochinov, chair of the MFA in Products of Design program at the School of Visual Arts and founder of design network Core77. We talk about who is really teachable, building good design from huge problems, the vast applications of "design thinking", and how much time is wasted on meeting...

        Photo by  Joe Lewandowski  on  Unsplash It’s Black Friday Forever in America: This week on Track Changes we ask the question on everyone’s minds: Are we happy that Amazon has come to Queens? On one hand, our own consumer choices have brought this upon us. Amazon is great at eliminating steps (hey there Same-Day Delivery and 1-Click Ordering). But on the other hand, we're now reliant, and c...

Everything You Like Is Garbage: You know the creepy feeling of walking into a dark room and finding your kid hunched over the iPad with their eyes glazed over? So do we. On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich talk about addiction and obsession —  words that are used interchangeably but that speak to different experiences. What kind of parenting decisions need to be made when kids are addicted to sc...

How Do We Move The Rectangle: It’s no secret that we think  design is integral to engineering great products . This week  Gina Trapani  and  Skyler Balbus  are joined by Dylan Field, CEO of Figma, to talk about how Figma’s collaborative interface design tool came to be. We talk about how diverse creative backgrounds are essential to building design teams, how browser-based tools leave designers at...

  <p>The Web is a Complex Place: Have you noticed that Track Changes has migrated off of Medium? That got us thinking about WordPress as a platform that’s changed enormously in the past few years. Front-end development has <em>exploded</em>. The way we use the web changed. No longer are we simply delivering pages and searching for things, we’re using the web to explore an infinit...

Don’t Add Bullshit To The World: In recent episodes you’ve heard from Paul, Rich, and various guests talk about  scaling ,  ethics ,  design , and  engineering  — now it’s time to hear from Postlight’s other leaders. We discuss the diverse backgrounds of our leadership team, how have their roles have changed over time, and how we come together to make good software while shipping great products. T...

Tech is Giant, Monolithic, and Scary: This week,  Paul Ford  and  Rich Ziade meet with  Louise Matsakis  to discuss how tech reporting has evolved alongside the hyper-growth of tech companies. How has the role of journalists changed? Which companies are difficult to talk to, and which are the easiest?  More often than before, Louise says that journalists are playing the role of content moderators,...

Creating a Language We Can Carry Forward: People get really good at bad habits. When we talk about  digital transformation , we’re talking about more than software and systems — we’re dealing with how people work with software and with each other. This week,  Paul Ford  and  Rich Ziade  discuss  Upgrade , our report on digital transformation. Why did we call it Upgrade? Because that’s what we’re a...

Never Going Away: It’s hard to conceive how tech giants will be destroyed. Might it be Government regulation? Another Great Depression?  Genius disruption from Topeka, Kansas ? This week,  Paul Ford  and  Rich Ziade  discuss the changeable future of tech by looking to the past. How does a company go from owning the market in a red-hot moment to a shadow of its former self? We talk about where comp...

  What Is Creative Capital, Anyway?: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade meet with Jules Ehrhardt , founder of Creative Capitol Studio FKTRY , the author of the term ‘digital product studio’, and an advocate for authenticity. On this episode, we talk about the problems with the old-guard agency model, where creatives are going instead, and how creativity is commodified and sold like sausage links....

Harpal Singh <p>Design is Not an Add-On: Why did it take so long for design to come back into the conversation? This week, <a href="https://medium.com/u/168dab556633" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paul Ford</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/u/829d19bc636a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rich Ziade</a> talk about Digital Transformation and the marriage between Desig...

  Making the World a Better Place: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade discuss how the ingegrity of platforms like Facebook and Twitter has been compromised by their growth. We talk about Facebook as a company versus Facebook as a system, and why they are crumbling. Was the company ignoring user concerns or just waiting until it impacted their profit?    Rich — 2:00: “People deciding that the gove...

  <p>Trusting Your Gut: This week, <a href="https://medium.com/u/168dab556633" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paul Ford</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/u/829d19bc636a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rich Ziade</a> are joined by <a href="http://www.marketfield.com/index.html" target="_blank">Michael Shaoul</a>, the philosopher-manager of <a href="htt...

Pull to Refresh? How about Smile to Fave: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade discuss the building blocks of software development. Why do apps so often look and behave the same? We break down the tension between working within beautifully designed parameters and the need to innovate. What principles do fast food and software share, and does this have anything to do with why Paul had so much troubl...

Product is Humbling: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade talk about John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies In a Silicon Valley Startup, a book about “what can go wrong when you believe stuff”. Drawing comparisons to Wild Wild Country’s Baghwan and the late Steve Jobs, this episode discusses the founder of Theranos’ charisma within the culture of Silicon Valley. Was the failure of Theranos to...

  Don’t Quit Your Day Job: This week, <a href="https://medium.com/u/168dab556633" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paul Ford</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/u/e7173b64fd0d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gina Trapani</a> sit down with <a href="https://medium.com/u/3f5dbabb6556" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rick Webb</a>, COO of <a href="https://www.timeho...

The Only Success that Matters: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade discuss the figurative moats that protect companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google from competition. Has anybody really figured out how to disrupt their markets? Why isn’t Postlight jumping on machine learning and blockchain ? This episode is about companies zeroing in on their own strengths and focusing on their right-sized ide...

Learning from Failure: On this week’s episode Paul Ford and Will Denton sit down with Victor Lombardi to talk about how great experience design often fails. We talk about taking a humanist approach to UX design within a corporate role, look at design that has failed, and find ways to detect early signs of failure. We also make fun of Google Plus. ► iTunes /► SoundCloud /► Overcast /► Stitcher /► M...

Great Experience Design Leads To Anti-Competitive Practices: In the wake of the EU’s decision to issue Google a $5 billion fine,  Paul Ford  and  Rich Ziade talk about how great experience design obliterates competition while antitrust laws cramp designers’ style. In between conversations about the ethics of being able to choose, we learn that Rich would die without being able to choose between Vi...

  Two Jabrons Shooting the Shit: Source management, change management, version control — is there a better, more modern way to track changes in software? This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade hash it out. For decades, change management has been a huge part of computing, but how has it developed over time? What works, what hasn’t, and where are we heading?  ► iTunes /► SoundCloud /► Overcast /► Stitc...

How does systems thinking influence design thinking? How much of shipping new design is about coping with anxiety? What do designers and basketball players have in common? From Abstract Theory to Capitalist Practice: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade meet with designer Robyn Kanner to discuss her journey from a tiny art school to a UX designer at Amazon to the founder of MyTransHealth. We talk a...

The Game of Product Management: This week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade record a live podcast episode at our Ship It! meetup . We dive into the blockers that slow us down, the drivers that move us forward and we compete to see who can ship it . We also get a window into Paul’s keynote skills! 4:00— Paul: “[Product Management] is kind of the uber topic of our existence: How do we get these things shippe...

How did TIVO lead to Netflix? How does good software lead to empowerment? In this episode, we deconstruct the everyday impact of great software. It’s pretty cool having control of the screen: This week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade meet with their friend Timothy Meaney , VP Product & Quality at Insight Catastrophe , to talk about what makes software great. Between the earliest spreadsheet programs,...

  Virtual vs. Physical Privacy: This week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade talk about privacy around your data and devices. We talk about search warrants, argue about the systemic problems of the prison system, and look into the ways that encrypted messaging is influencing our laws. We also get a preview into Rich’s life as a lawyer! [audio player] ► iTunes /► SoundCloud /► Overcast /► Stitcher /► MP3 /►R...

  We sit down with the host of Zig Zag to talk about decentralization, feminism, and how the blockchain might fix journalism The creators of Zig Zag: Manoush Zomorodi and Jen Poyant Capitalism, Journalism, and Women: This week Paul Ford and xarissa sit down with Manoush Zomorodi to talk about her new podcast, Zig Zag , and why she left a steady job at NYPR to create a media company on the blockcha...